Nature's Child
by flaymzofice
Summary: Challange response. One shot. VERSION 1


**A/N: Challenge response as posted by Dazedizzy.**

**Said challenge: **This was from my Creative Writing teacher in high school, who tried to remind me that "Show, don't tell" didn't mean "Never tell." He gave me this exercise specifically to beak me against the technique. He called it "Tell by Showing". I have three pre-Socratic quotations. Write a story, drabble, or poem using one of them (or all of them) as an epigraph:

a. Nature likes to hide itself. --_Heraclitus_

b. Dark and light, bad and good, are not different but one and the same. --_Heraclitus_

c. Worlds are altered rather than destroyed. --_Democritus_

**Again, two versions. Reviews welcome!**

**Nature's Child**

**Nature likes to hide itself**

–**_Heraclitus_**

"Look, I said cut it out, alright?" Max said forcefully, shoving his hand from her shoulder. She grabbed the pitcher of beer and stormed off as forcefully as the sloshing contents would allow.

He made to follow but walked into a body which didn't seem like it was there accidentally.

"Didn't you hear the lady?" a familiar voice wondered calmly. But one look into his eyes told a completely different story. A quiet threat lay in the depths of his dilated pupils. Apparently the veiled implications were too subtle.

"What's it to you?" Max's would be stalker tossed back carelessly.

Alec took it for the challenge it was. But gave the man one last warning. A smirk and, "Do you really wanna find out?"

The stranger cocked an eyebrow before giving him a once over. A disapproving once over. But before he could even lift a finger, he had lost use of it – Alec had his arm twisted painfully behind his back. The cry was small for self preserving egoistic pride and it was lost in the buzz that was Crash at six in the evening when everyone got off work.

"You sure about that?" Alec asked in the man's ear, his voice dangerously low, his tone ominous.

"What the hell's your problem?" the man wanted to know, struggling uselessly. Alec let him go and was surprised to find the guy did have some sort of intelligence because he didn't wait for an answer and disappeared wordlessly into the crowd. To prey on some other poor unsuspecting female. But he was only one man, he couldn't save every damsel in distress.

Not that Max was exactly what you'd call a damsel. Or even in distress at that. But she was transgenic. And they looked out for their own. Or so he told himself.

"What was that?" came a drawl he knew only too well. Alec closed his eyes. Damn his carelessness.

"What?" he returned, turning to face OC with a puzzled shrug.

She fixed him with an unimpressed pursing of her lips, arms crossed. He never noticed it before but OC could be pretty intimidating for an Ordinary.

"What?" Alec asked again, this time somewhat more defensively and with a little hint of apprehension. OC was a lot more perceptive than he ever gave her credit for.

Mostly because it was never him she saw straight through so he never cared enough to second glance her knack for it. It made him wonder how she was Max's best friend – he had always known Max to be notoriously blank just so others couldn't read her. Or maybe it was just him.

"Don't make me ask you again," OC warned, tilting her head slightly.

Alec glanced over her shoulder for the briefest of seconds but she caught it. Hell, she had anticipated it. These transgenics, they thought they were so special and secretive but they were all the same – all open books just waiting to have their pages turned.

"Relax, she ain't around," OC assured him in an almost bored voice, still waiting for an answer.

"Why would I care?" Alec wondered with a bemused grin.

OC cocked another eyebrow at him.

"Since when did you become a woman of so few words?" Alec teased, ducking mildly and unconsciously in expectation of a slap – she did live with Max after all.

OC rolled her eyes. They might be waiting for their pages to be turned but they be damned if they didn't make someone else do it for'em.

"I saw what'chu did over there," she told him, nodding her head in the direction of the bar where he had had his little fun.

"Alright, I confess. I used the line again," Alec conceded.

"You what?" was the confused reply.

Alec took a deep breath and looked away like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

"I told JD she was unique, a creature like no other."

That earned him a shove. His hand went to his shoulder in mock hurt as his face assumed an offended frown.

"What was that for?"

"Lyin'," OC informed him pointedly, daring him to say otherwise.

"Ouch, that hurts, it really does, right here," Alec said, holding a fist over his heart.

"Alec, shuttup."

At that, his ever pretty face broke into a toothy grin. Except, this was Alec so it wasn't so much toothy as picture perfect.

OC eyed him with a shake of her head. She rolled her eyes again. Alec slid his gaze to either side like he was searching for something to fill the silence but knew better than to pre-empt anything OC might have to say. In some ways, he was more wary of her than he was of Max – at least she was predictable in her physical violence. With OC, you could never tell when she was going to administer you with a good dose of reality.

"When you ever gonna come clean to yourself?" she asked finally. And there it was.

Alec ducked his head slightly in deliberate confusion.

"Huh?"

Which got him a slap upside the head.

"Hey!" he protested, his hand flying to the back of his head, more to fix his hair than anything else.

"You keep on lyin' 'n I'mma keep on slappin', you got the OC guarantee right here," she assured him.

"Woman you're crazy," Alec told her, the frown of protest lingering on his expression.

"No, crazy is the one who won't admit he has feelings. Crazy is picking fights with every man alive just to prove a point. Crazy, is lying to Original Cindy."

Alec held her piercing gaze but she didn't back down. He should have known. Just like Max she would never concede a point. At least, not if she knew she was right. Whereas Max would take a right hook to her perfectly formed features rather than admit she was wrong. It was one of her more endearing qualities. To him.

"Don't," was all he said, his playful tone suddenly to be gone, his boyish grin replaced with all the seriousness of a man who knew he'd been made.

"And follow in your footsteps?" OC replied incredulously, "I don't think so."

"Don't," Alec repeated, this time his voice barely a whisper.

OC paused. And in her moment of hesitation, gone was her opportunity to force Alec from his hiding place. Out into the real world. Out in a place where his feelings might be as resolutely thrown back in his face as he might think.

"You gotta help a guy out. Max is rinsing my wages man," Sketchy complained, clapping an arm around them both.

OC glared daggers at him before her overwhelming sense of reality kicked in – "boy don't you learn? You suck at pool anyway. Do you really think you'll suck less against them?"

Sketchy stared into space for a moment before shrugging, "well that's why I'm friend with Alec here. Dude you'll put her in her place right?"

OC looked expectantly at Alec, uncrossing her arms to free her hand ready for the "gladly" she knew would be coming from him. So her hand was sorely disappointed when it was instead stopped short.

"Seems to me she's right where she should be."

Both OC and Sketchy threw him a bewildered look before he spared them any more future Botox sessions.

"But I'll see what I can do," he offered with his trademark grin, and his cocky swagger as he made his way over to the pool table, where Max greeted him with a customary roll of her eyes. Alec shoved her gently before she handed over the cue.


End file.
